World Naval Developments

McDonnell Douglas and Industri Pesawat Terband Nusantra (IPTN) of Indonesia are evaluating the compatibility of the Harpoon antishipping missile and IPTN’s CN-235 maritime patrol aircraft.

CN-235 Carries Harpoon

Here We Go Again

The Gulf crisis has highlighted the problems caused by the decline of the U.S. merchant fleet. With very little active merchant shipping avail­able, the Department of Defense relied largely on the reserve fleet, a mix °f surviving World War II ships, and more modern hulls purchased at relatively low prices during the shipping slump of the 1980s. There was never any real expectation that this fleet would suffice in a major emer­gency, but then again U.S. allies had substantial merchant fleets of their °wn. As long as the only major contingency in our planning was a NATO War, the question was whether NATO, not U.S., merchant shipping suf­ficed to carry cargoes abroad. Moreover, shipping requirements were calculated on the basis of voyages of about 3,500 nautical miles, rather than the much longer voyages to the Persian Gulf.

We are already moving into a post-Cold War world. That does not necessarily mean a safer world—nationalist passions are much higher than in the past, for example—but it does mean that we must expect to rely upon ourselves much more than in the past. Whatever the fate of NATO, the current formal treaty does not allow for alliance operations in •nost of the Third World. We may gain assistance there, but we cannot ^e*pect it as a matter of right. Nor does it seem likely that we will long retain anything remotely like the current array of bases, or of arms bumps, in foreign areas. Current projections of base closings abroad are ludicrously modest in comparison to what will probably happen.

After all, why should we retain positions originally granted in fear that Ihe Soviets would one day swarm over Western Europe? Most Europeans think it more likely that the Soviet Union will soon collapse into civil ^war; at the least, they think the Soviet threat has died for the next decade °r so.

We still retain vital interests abroad, many of them in an increasingly turbulent Third World, and we still must cross two rather wide oceans to g^et there. Because we are unlikely to begin any crisis with large forces already in place, we are faced with repeating the errors of the past. The Navy is the only force that can appear almost immediately, but it can b°ld the line for only a limited time. Anything more than that will in­volve inserting troops and ground-based airplanes, and building up the associated infrastructure. That takes time, and it takes a lot of shipping. Unless the relevant laws of physics are repealed, there is little hope of changing these circumstances.

Even before the Kuwait crisis began, there was nervousness— particularly in the Army—at the limited amount of U.S. fast sea lift. For example, several years ago there was a proposal to build a class of very fast surface effect ships. They would have been able to reach Europe— but not very much farther—and, unfortunately, there was very little rea­son to imagine that they could have paid their way in peacetime. This idea died, but the need for sea lift was obviously perceived. Now it has been demonstrated.

The issue is sometimes presented as Marine Corps amphibious ship­ping versus the shipping to support the U. S. Army and the U.S. Air Force, but in fact all of them need merchant ships. One of the defense economies effected in the 1960s was to separate amphibious shipping into the assault echelon and the follow-up force. The aging assault trans­ports were replaced by new ships such as the Tarawa (LHA-l)-class amphibious assault ships and the new Whidbey Island (LSD-4 l)-class dock landing ships. The transports that would have followed up to supply support personnel and materiel were not replaced at all; they were trans­ferred to the Maritime Administration where most were broken up. The Desert Shield mobilization has shown that the survivors of the old re­serve fleet are of little current value.

The Reagan administration made a start in buying modern merchant ships, but the numbers were limited at best. Moreover, as the active merchant fleet collapsed, so did the pool of skilled mariners needed to man them. This problem was not really urgent until the Soviet threat began to collapse—which left the United States with very real future possible military emergencies, but without the allied shipping strength on which we could have relied in the past. The problem is greater than the reluctance of allied governments to risk their seamen in support of purely U.S. aims; it is easy to imagine circumstances in which they will oppose U.S. operations altogether.

A few of the modern ships of the current reserve fleet have broken down in service. It seems reasonable to suggest that, however careful the maintenance of the reserve ships, some will not work as well as might be expected. The preferred alternative is to keep these ships actively em­ployed. That need not be particularly expensive, and it would maintain ready crews as well as ready ships.

The government seems destined to buy sea lift in any case. Without substantial U.S.-owned strategic sea lift, there is little or no rationale for maintaining substantial post-Cold War ground or air forces for crisis operations, since such forces cannot be supported overseas.

Once the ships have been bought, why keep them idle? Why not lease them to U.S.-flag operators? That would not be a subsidy, since the ships would be purchased whether or not the operators stepped forward. It would drastically reduce the cost of running U.S.-flag merchant ships, since the operator would, in effect, be relieved of much or all of the cost of construction. The leases would not, however, be gifts; the operators would be maintaining an essential manpower resource, and they would have to maintain the ships themselves. There might be enough return in the scheme to allow the government what the U.S. shipbuilding industry needs to stay alive—a thin but steady stream of orders for new ships.

The entire operation might be considered broadly analogous to the very valuable Civil Reserve Air Fleet (CRAF), though the suggested basis would be rather different since U.S. airlines are currently far more viable than U.S. shipping lines. The idea makes more sense now than it did in the past, when the whole shipping fleet of NATO—and probably also our Far Eastern allies—could be relied upon. That is unlikely to be the case in the coming multi-polar world.

To the extent that the shipping makes it possible for us to transport troops abroad in a crisis, it replaces much of the fixed investment in current foreign bases. As those bases are abandoned or sold off, we can think of U.S.-built merchant ships—designated for sea lift—as a substi­tute for current military construction accounts spent abroad. After all, as we lose the bases, the ships are the only real substitute. This expenditure ought not to compete with amphibious lift or with combatant shipbuild­ing, because it serves a very different purpose.

As in the past, government involvement in merchant ship construction ought to be massive enough to ensure economies of scale. The govern­ment may be able to induce yard modernization to the point where they represent genuine mobilization resources, capable of shifting from low- rate to mass production. After all, although we may not have to face the possibility of major war in the near term, we cannot discount it in the longer term, and the shipbuilding industry would be very difficult to build up entirely from scratch.

We also must face the consequences of another economic decision masquerading as a military one. For some time it has been tacit U.S. policy that logistic shipping will not be subject to wartime loss. That decision makes it relatively easy to estimate the level of shipping needed to support, say, combat operations in Europe. The support level is then within the sort of numbers of ships available to the NATO nations, and awkward issues of shipping protection or subsidy do not arise. Baldly stated, however, it is absurd for a general war in which the other side has serious anti-shipping forces.

This tacit assumption was tied to another, that any NATO war would be very short. The only justification for the assumption was that, given the sheer number of nuclear weapons in Europe, both sides would agree to stop fighting rather than risk immolation. That also assumed, how­ever, that war had begun as a sort of horrible mistake, and that both sides would be equally willing to stop. There is little historical reason to be­lieve that; experience in the Gulf suggests that wars need not begin as mistakes—Saddam Hussein did not just fall into Kuwait.

If we abandon the short-war assumption, we face a very high projected expense for a major war. Fortunately, major central war now seems remote, so we can buy up some of what we need slowly and in limited quantities. One way to do so is to emphasize the potential to mobilize U.S. industry. That includes the ability to build ships, and to replace likely war losses. As Third World nations get more and more anti-ship weapons, it seems likely that many logistic support ships will be dam­aged and sunk even in very limited interventions. We probably will not fight another Battle of the Atlantic during the 1990s, but any Battle of the Persian Gulf also would involve freighter losses, which would have to be made good. Foreign shipping will not always be available, and we may find it difficult to accept the necessary foreign-exchange outlays even to buy used hulls.

In the 1980s, as the nuclear assumptions seemed less and less credible, the Reagan administration expanded the U.S. Navy partly on the theory that future war would likely be protracted and non-nuclear. It also showed much greater interest in the sort of mobilization production re­quired to support a protracted war, but it did not go all the way; it did not reverse the tacit assumption that warships and merchant ships would be sunk or severely damaged in such a war. That is why the 600-ship fleet was predicated on the scale of simultaneous operations required early in a war. Then-Secretary of the Navy John Lehman often pointed out that naval expansion would help to make up for a realistic level of wartime losses, but the issue of loss levels could not be raised formally.

This is still a serious issue. We are now shrinking the active fleet. In the recent past, decommissioning has generally led immediately either to sale abroad or to scrapping. We do not see any large war on the immedi­ate horizon, but we are likely to see numerous and protracted operations in the Third World. They may well entail losses and the United States will still want some means of making them up, which suggests that moth-balling may be preferable to scrapping or transfer.

Merchant ships are a more complex issue. The United States seems unable to maintain a merchant marine in peacetime without subsidy, and subsidy was rejected by the Reagan administration. It is probably not much more expensive, however, to subsidize a substantial active mer­chant fleet than it is to maintain a large enough inactive—but ready— reserve with the requisite crews. Moreover, a large active merchant fleet could generate enough business to keep yards alive, yards that would be needed to replace wartime losses. Although Third World countries may be unable to impose major warship losses, they can certainly damage and

destroy merchant ships.

The United States finds itself preparing for war, and the other side has only limited antishipping resources. We are badly stretched by distance and by the absence of allied shipping. The stretch can only become worse, and our likely adversary can damage or sink ships by mining or by sabotage. Although the active U.S. merchant marine had deteriorated badly by the onset of the Vietnam War in 1965, the last comparable situation, the reserve fleet—mostly built during World War II—was still large and it could still be mobilized.

Without those merchant ships, it is in 1990 impossible to sustain the ground forces and ground-based air units in Saudi Arabia, at least partly because there is virtually no local infrastructure apart from the air bases. There is no vast dump of spare parts, except what we bring into the country. The Saudis must import much of their food, and that goes for us as well. Because the only jet fuel refinery in the region is over the border in occupied Kuwait, even jet fuel must be brought into the country.

While people and high-value cargo can move by air, tonnage still moves by sea. Because that is very nearly due to the laws of physics, it is not likely to change in the near future.

The question is whether the United States wishes to retain the capabil­ity to fight in places like Saudi Arabia beyond the end of the present operation and into an era in which foreign bases will probably be few and hedged about with restrictions, and in which our current allies may not be nearly so accommodating. Because so much of their materiel is always afloat, the Marines will remain viable as a means of immediate interven­tion. Similarly carriers will remain viable. There is no substitute for either, and yet both are inherently limited.

Without some form of replenishment, neither can sustain operations for very long. A carrier, for example, needs underway replenishment every few days if she is to sustain high-intensity operations. Generally, she is accompanied by a fast replenishment ship, so the pair can operate for a few weeks. But the replenishment ship herself requires replenish­ment, generally by a naval tanker. That tanker in turn is generally filled by a commercial tanker at some rear port.

The Marine amphibious unit is designed to operate self-sustained, but only for a limited period. The follow-up shipping is all commercial. The Army units that have reinforced the Marines in the Gulf—and which now provide the main armored striking power—also depend entirely on shipping for their heavy equipment, although the troops are flown in. Similarly, the Air Force cannot operate without mountains of supplies and spares. Once they are present, of course, it can generate very consid­erable striking power.

All of that means that without a substantial reserve of merchant ship­ping, the United States loses its ability to operate abroad unilaterally in any sustained fashion. It can still bomb Tripoli, and it can still land Marines in Beirut, but it can forget about operations like Desert Shield.

A Rose Is A Rose . . .

Some months ago the Soviet Navy announced that it was renaming major ships named after the capitals of rebellious republics: Baku, Riga, Tbilisi. Riga, newly launched, was renamed Varyag—a classic Russian cruiser name formerly borne by a Kynda-class cruiser, now presumably stricken. Now it has been announced that Baku is to be renamed Admiral of the Soviet Union Gorshkov, and that Tbilisi will be renamed Admiral of the Fleet Kuznetzov. These names are appropriate. Admiral Kuznetzov was Stalin’s naval chief, both before and after World War II, and was responsible for the massive building program that produced the Sverdlov- and Skoryy-classes; included capital ships; and, reportedly, carriers. After Stalin’s death, he was discarded together with his program. Pre­sumably that program looks much more reasonable now that the Soviet fleet is again building very large warships. His successor, Admiral Gorshkov, was apparently appointed to preside over the death of the Soviet surface fleet, but managed to save the fleet by transforming it.

Soviet history is so murky that much of the Stalin pre- and postwar programs remains obscure, half a century later. Since last fall, however, two major journals, Sudostroenniye and Morskoi Sbornik (the latter a rough equivalent to Proceedings), have begun to publish details—- including design histories—of the Soviet battleships and battle cruisers. Perhaps much more will emerge in the aftermath of the renaming of the first Soviet full-deck carrier, and we will have a better idea of the ration- , ale for Stalin’s vast Soviet surface fleet.